Taken Away (22 page)

‘You're not wrong on that,' he said. ‘I went back to England within the year, joined the merchant navy, and then the RAF. I saw the
world
, Lacy.'

She tilted her head at him and brushed his hair back. ‘Tell me you'll have a great life,' she whispered. It was as though he'd never spoken; she was far away, in another world, another time, gazing up into a young man's face, their whole life ahead of them. ‘Tell me you'll have the wonderful life he never got.'

James swallowed and said nothing, just kissed her forehead – a lingering kiss to seal his lips – and then pulled her in to rest his chin on her head again.

They stood that way for a long while. Eventually my ma spoke, quietly so as not to break the connection between the two old people. ‘Mr Hueston?' she said. ‘Were you sweethearts? Cheryl and yourself? Were you in love?'

James Hueston didn't stop stroking my nan's hair, but his eyes shifted to my brother.
Stop looking at Dom!
I almost shouted it at him.
Ma'll get suspicious!
Sure enough, Ma followed the old man's eyes with a puzzled frown.

Dom was still standing with his hands resting on the back of his chair like the world's most patient maître d' waiting to seat a customer. He and James Hueston gazed at each other across the top of Nan's head. Dom's expression was tragic, a bleeding wound, every conflicted twist and turn of Francis's thoughts and emotions running across his polished-marble face like cloud-shadows on a hill. He was staring across the yawning gap of almost a century to the friend Francis had once loved; the friend who'd lived. A friend who knew the secrets that Francis perhaps no longer wanted to hear.

‘Are you alright, Dom?' said Ma.

I got to my feet. ‘I think Nan needs to sit down, Mister Hueston. She can have Dom's chair.'

James guided Nan to the chair and got her seated, tucking the car-blanket around her shoulders. She participated only on the most surface level, already miles away again. Dom stood behind them, looking as though he might fade away any minute; like he might just let go of the chair and slide to the floor. I shot a glance at Ma. She was frowning at him – squinting as if trying to see him through a fog. She had gathered Dee into a tight little hedgehog shape on her lap and was holding her very tightly. Her expression said,
What's going on?

James Hueston turned his honest face to her, and she latched onto his words as if they were a life raft – gratefully allowing herself be distracted from the shambling wreck of her son.

‘Lacy and I weren't sweethearts, missus. She were always the little pal of my heart, but we weren't never
that
way with each other. No, when we were teenagers, Lacy were engaged to my best friend. That is, she were engaged to Francis's brother, Lorry.'

LOST AGAIN,
AFTER SO LONG RUNNING

AT FIRST I THOUGHT
he meant – what? Some kind of child bride? Some weird Victorian arranged-marriage type deal? And then, God help me, way too slow, it hit me. Lorry hadn't died. Lorry hadn't died at all. He had grown up. God damn it, Lorry might even still be alive!

‘Cheryl was
engaged
?' Ma was utterly astounded. ‘Cheryl?' she repeated.

‘
My
Lorry?' whispered Dom.

James Hueston's eyes began to drift to Dom again.

‘Mr Hueston,' I said loudly, ‘maybe you should sit down? You look shattered.' There was more of a command than a request to my voice, and I pulled back my own chair and offered it to him. He gave me a long, level look, and I tried to drill holes through him with my eyes.
Stop looking at Dom!
I don't think I blinked for about fifty seconds. Then James Hueston rounded the table, purposely keeping his eyes off my brother. He only flicked a brief glance at Dom as he sat in his chair.

It's very cold, isn't it?' said Nan. ‘That's because of Francis. ‘Laurence says he's killing poor Dom.'

Dom leapt like a fish. He jerked his hands away from Nan. We all looked at her, a brief suspended moment of shock. Then Ma swallowed and blinked rapidly.

‘Cheryl,' she said. ‘You're upsetting Dominick. Please stop talking about him like that.'

Nan raised an eyebrow, looking Ma up and down. ‘I'm not
complaining
, Olive. It's not anyone's
fault
. Francis is just a child. Sure, how was he to know? But if he had only listened to Laurence, none of this would have happened, and Dom would be alright.'

Ma pressed her teeth together. I could see her counting slowly backwards from ten in her head. She turned apologetically to James Hueston, and I think she was talking to herself as much as the old man when she ground out, ‘Cheryl can't help it, Mr Hueston. She says funny stuff sometimes, but it's not her fault. Try not to let it upset you, because . . . because she doesn't mean it. Before her stroke, she really was the most wonderful – the most
vibrant
woman. It would have done your heart good to see her.'

James Hueston's jaw worked slowly, as if he was chewing something unpleasant. I think he suspected the truth. I think that, unlike my ma, he could see the effect that Francis was having on Dom. I wondered if he longed to tell Ma. I wondered if, like me, he wanted to grab Ma's face and turn it to Dom and scream at her, ‘Take a good look. Take a good long look at your son!'

Instead he said, ‘Cheryl were always the loveliest person.'

I allowed myself to check on Dom. He looked as though he were sinking – alone, desperate, confused . . . drifting out of reach. Nan was shivering, now, clutching the tartan car-blanket around her and frowning. Behind her, thin spidery threads of fog drifted around her shoulders. They were emanating from Dom, rising up from him in a slowly gathering mist as he stared at my nan.

‘Dom!' I said sharply. He looked up at me, and I was at a loss for what to say to him. I held his eyes with my eyes. I tried to tell him,
It's alright, I'm here. Look at me. Just keep looking at me. I'm here.
‘Do you want some toast?' I croaked lamely.

His shadow-eyes just glittered at me; his expression didn't change. But the fog dissipated without a trace into the air.

Ma answered me before Dom's silence became obvious. ‘Toast would be lovely,' she said. ‘Put the kettle on if you like.' She glanced at Dom, but of course she saw nothing, not a flicker of anything wrong. She dropped her eyes to look at Nan, who was hunched against the cold, and rocking. ‘Maybe we should bring Nan back in to the fire,' she said.

‘No, no,' drawled Nan, waving a hand dismissively. ‘It's just Francis. If he'd stop breathing down my blooming neck, I'd be fine.'

Dom skittered back, distancing himself from Nan as much as possible in the small room.

Ma gave him a sympathetic little grimace. ‘It's alright, pet. Don't pay her any notice. Sure, she'll be off on a different track altogether tomorrow. You remember the three days she thought I was Oliver Cromwell? She kept snarling at me,
Hell before Connaught, you blood-soaked tyrant
, and refusing to budge from the sofa.' She twisted a smile at him and wrinkled her nose in understanding.

Dom just kept backing off, his mouth open slightly, his arms hanging. I resisted the urge to go to him and just stood there with my heart lodged painfully beneath my Adam's apple, watching him shuffle backwards until he was smack up against the sink. James Hueston began talking, and I knew it was to distract our mother from the sight of her eldest son slouched against the counter like some cheap zombie extra.

‘When Fran died, his poor mam just disintegrated,' said James, catching and holding my mother's attention. ‘She just sat down and never really got up; that's how it felt to us at the time. The girls took over running the house, looking after each other and their dad. But Lorry . . . poor Lorry.' James shook his head. ‘Nancy couldn't stand the sight of him after that. Just couldn't bear to look at him. They had been so alike, you see, him and Fran. Twins.' He flicked a glance at Dom. ‘Lorry came to live with me and Dad. Can't say it was . . . well . . . it weren't like it had been here. It weren't
comfy
, shall we say. My dad weren't ever home; he worked all the livelong day, and there just weren't no . . . there weren't no tenderness.' He watched Ma cradling Dee and nodded to himself. ‘Aye. I missed Nancy Conyngham an awful lot – can't even begin to imagine how poor Lorry felt. It were just him and me from then on, all alone, the two of us. And we were so . . . it were . . . for a long time . . . ' He struggled for words. ‘Fran's death . . . ' He glanced at Dom again. ‘Fran's death just cut us to ribbons.'

‘Oh yes, it did certainly,' agreed Nan softly. ‘Poor Nancy was never the same, and Laurence lost all his sunshine. Remember, Shamie? He wouldn't let us call him Lorry anymore? I think it reminded him of Fran,' she murmured. ‘That's what I think.'

Dom's eyes were brimming with tears. ‘Poor Lorry,' he said softly. Ma shot him a look and creased her mouth and nodded, the two of them moved by the story, but each for an entirely different reason.

The old man fiddled with his cigarettes, lifted them, threw them down with a grimace, lifted them again. Finally, he opened the pack with a disgruntled ‘gah!' and lit himself another fag. The sweet smoke hazed the air, and I inhaled it gratefully. It smelt like Grandda Joe and summer and normal times.

It shocked me when Nan reached across the table and helped herself to a Woodbine from James's pack, and even more so when James leant forward, natural as you please, and lit it for her. Ma gaped as Nan pulled in a lungful of smoke and held it like a pro. Evidently she was just as surprised as I was to see Nan with a fag in hand.

Nan knocked her head back, relishing the flavour, and eventually released the smoke in a fragrant blue stream that tumbled slowly through the pool of light from the ceiling lamp. ‘Oh yes,' she said softly, her eyes following the curls and torrents in the light, ‘your ma missed you an awful lot, Francis. She cut poor Laurence out of her life as surely as if you'd both died.'

Dom opened his mouth, his face questioning, but shut it again when James Hueston spoke.

‘Been a long time since we sat and shared a fag in this kitchen, Lacy dear.' He tapped his finger on the table as he spoke, his eyes shifting from Dom to Nan. ‘Do you remember? The last time we all sat round this table – Lorry, Jenny, May, yourself and me – we played cards all night long.'

‘That would have been poor Nancy's funeral,' said Nan.

‘Mam?' whispered Dom.

Ma looked at him. ‘Yes, love?' But Dom was looking at James, his thoughts on his long-dead but only now mourned mother, I suppose. Ma seemed to decide she'd imagined his hoarse whisper and turned her attention back to our miraculously lucid nan.

‘What age were you, then?' I asked Nan. ‘When Fran's mam died.'

Nan frowned. ‘I was . . . oh, let me see . . . Laurence must have been . . . ' She thought a moment, her lips moving as she calculated.

James shot a sideways glance at my brother. An acute column of cold was building around him. I could feel it advancing across the room to where I was standing. I dug my fingers into the back of my chair. James and I made eye contact for a moment.

‘It were 1915,' said James, flipping ash into his saucer and turning his attention back to Nan. ‘You and Lorry had been engaged for seven months. It were the year before me and Lorry joined the army. The year May found politics.'

‘Oh May,' tutted Nan, shaking her head, her jaw popping.

‘She were a brave woman,' countered James. ‘They were all brave. All those men and women. Fighting to free Ireland.'

‘You were brave, too!' Nan pointed her fag at him. ‘And no one should have ever implied otherwise! May Conyngham was a bloody fool to let politics come between you. She lost herself a great man when she broke your engagement. I could have strangled her.' Nan angrily stubbed her fag out. It was only half smoked, and she instantly regretted it. She gave James a sheepish look. He grimaced playfully at her and lit her another. They were as easy with each other as an old married couple, as comfy as worn slippers.

I hadn't seen my nan this alive, this
now
, in over nine months. James Hueston, this warm, generous-spirited man, had invoked her for us. He had called forth my nan, and he had warmed my brother, just by being himself. What cruelties could possibly have brought a man like this to the water's edge on a winter beach? What could have driven him to surrender himself to those icy waves?

‘What became of Lorry?' asked Dom. ‘Please tell me, Shamie. What happened to him?'

James Hueston vacillated for a moment. Then he stubbed out his cigarette. There was something final about that gesture, as if, unwilling to inflict this detail on Francis, James had decided not to continue. For a moment, I thought he might actually excuse himself and leave us all hanging. I nearly interceded, but Dom spoke again. ‘Shamie,' he pleaded.
Please. I can't go on.
‘Just tell me.'

‘I joined the army because he joined the army,' said James. ‘I were a tough little gurrier, you know, and Lorry, he has this tender side to him. There was no way I were letting him go to war on his own. I promised Lacy that I'd keep him safe.' He smiled over at Nan, and she shook her head in grim self-recrimination.

‘I should never have made you make that promise.'

‘We were young, Lacy. We had no idea.' His face fell like a plummeting stone. ‘We really had
no
idea.' He ran his hand over his eyes. ‘So,' he said. ‘Yes. Lorry joined up because . . . heh . . . because he was Lorry. And I tagged along behind because I loved him, and because it sounded like an adventure. And . . . ' He shrugged. ‘We got by. We made it through; we outlived every single one of our original platoon. Isn't that funny? Every man-jack of them dead by 1917. So,' he whispered, ‘we end up in a mud-hole called Passchendaele, fighting forward and back for a few yards of muck and a shell of a town. And there we were, on Lorry's twentieth . . . ' His eyes flicked to Dom. He seemed to stop, reconsider what he wanted to say, and start again somewhere else. ‘On a . . . on a rainy night, near the end of 1917, we were running from one trench to another while the sky fell down around us. A really good friend of ours . . . Jolly . . . a real decent bloke . . . a good man . . . he . . . he slipped on the duckboards, he slammed into Lorry. Sent him flying. Sent him . . . sent him flying to the edge of the duckboards. And . . . '